Hello, and welcome to Nate Chen Publications, home of the Project Sumter case files and, hopefully some day in the future, other stories. Six months ago I started this blog with the intent of serializing Heat Wave, the first novel dealing with Project Sumter and the talented individuals that work for (and against) that agency. This is the first in a pair of posts serving as a kind of review of how things are going, and what I’m thinking of doing for the next six months to a year.

When I originally started this blog it was with the intention to do exactly what I’m doing now: Write a story. Make it available to the world here. One day publish it in some format, probably as an eBook and probably independently. Huzzah business plan!

Now here I am, seven months into that plan and six months into the serialization, and I’ve run into an interesting quandary. I’ve managed to keep up with a fairly demanding schedule of three posts per week, amounting to 4,000+ words, and one of the ways I did that was by having a backlog of material to work with. Great so far, right? Except, while I had a backlog, I by no means had Heat Wave complete as I wanted it to appear. It’s been growing and evolving as time goes by, as stories have a tendency to do, and like all stories it’s probably going to need a little editing when its done. I’m not talking about simple GPS (grammar, punctuation and syntax) editing, I’m talking about some structural work and possibly the addition of a scene or two.

The problem: Heat Wave is already technically published here on this blog. How much tinkering is really kosher? While having new content would give people an incentive to pick up the published version of the story, do I really want to be that guy? On the other hand, marketing is a part of business, and I started this blog in the hope to use it to advance my writing career. I want to have Heat Wave finished in another two months or so, and I had originally hoped to have an eBook ready to publish on the one year anniversary.

To do that, I’ll need to figure things out soon. So I’m asking for the opinions of my readers. Would you rather see an eBook version of Heat Wave identical to what’s here, except for some basic GPS clean-up? Or would you rather see new scenes added and perhaps the order of some scenes adjusted to give the story better flow? Would you object to the eBook having a special goodie, like a short story that would only be published as part of the book? Or do you have no particular preference at all? I’d love to hear your comments.